lit from behind

To be in so much pain among the first breaths of a second nascence, soaked in wedding pyre; to never posesses vision or control, left to wither beneath stench and unfamiliarities: a death unto itself. Saturated by the promises of genesis and hanged tarot. Where from the start, breeds trauma and the worst taste —

⋆⋅𖤓⋅⋆ ──

02 ; Multi Ghoul Thoughts

Tiny excerpt from a long ramble about some lore. Then.. a little bit from my Swiss character profile. Part of his personality section 🫳🫳

Thus, in the Pit, they typically manifest through Chaos. Unbridled energy foaming at the maw, accompanied with overall strength, the ability to dominate any of the existing elements, or exist alongside them. Prospective lightning caught in a breaking jar, where the electricity itself is just everything mashed together in unfathomably high concentrations; sharp to the touch. Something you can’t look directly at. Something that vibrates at and emits such high frequencies that it nearly seems to know you, or become sentient, or reside itself in your head

-

[ + ] charismatic, emotionally perceptive, creative, passionate, strategic, quick-witted

[ = ] adaptive, loyal, stubborn, honest, competitive, sly, free-rolling, playful, dissecting

[ - ] chaotic, aggressive, provocative, untamed, elusive, restless, impulsive, self-seeking (at times)

Swiss; curated by the pits and morphed by the flame into the precinct and pinnacle of versatility, elusion, and unholy gain. Never fully tamed during his post-summon conditioning, Swiss is incredibly influenced by the instinct, vice and virtue of his breed, thriving off of impulse and thrills of adrenaline. His motives, as drawn by natural tendencies he struggles to confront, lie in digestion and curation of potent emotion and passions; creating for an incredibly perfervid and headstrong individual. Sometimes translating as prodding or manipulative, and sometimes as supportive or influencing, Swiss is always the life of the party, with energy radiating from him by the seams. He absorbs energy just as he reflects it, embeds it, and just as much as he feeds on it.

Not aligned to good nor evil, ebbing and flowing between the two for equal tastes, he is a fluid being defined by chaos and morally gray motive. Although on his better days he can still opt for lounging and relaxing, he offers several facets and caters to several prototypes. Ever-adaptive, and ever-perceptive, his eyes stay lidded, and dangerously fascinating.

⋆⋅𖤓⋅⋆ ──

03 ; Random Swissalps????

No idea where this is from but it’s old as hell. Found it in my notes?????? Could possibly be revamped to somethin iunno..

“Plucked it straight from the vine. Somewhere in Eden.”

Deliberately, his words fell off his tongue with little to no eligible sustenance; no yes or no, no guide in direction, no admittance or acknowledgment of the crime suspected of him lingering in the air. Mountain could lecture him about it later if he wanted, dig into all the rights and wrongs and cautions he craved under his tongue; but for now, sharing oxygen in limited supply over chemical compounds served the strongest.

Also, weed doesn’t even grow off a vine. So there’s that.

“Any place’s right ‘nuff if you can see it out, baby.”

──── ⋆⋅𖤓⋅⋆ ──

The bath water's gone cold in the next room and neither of them cares.

Rain's sprawled across the bedding with his robes half-off one shoulder, still smelling like the salt and oil they'd dumped in the tub, still warm enough that he keeps pressing the back of his hand to Dew's arm just to share it.

Dew's flat on his back. One arm flung behind his head, the other resting on his stomach, eyes tracking something on the ceiling that isn't there. Quiet — but not the bad kind. Rain's learned the difference.

This is the quiet Dew gets when he's full to the brim and doesn't have anywhere to put it yet.

Rain watches him. The rise and fall of his chest. The little twitch at the corner of his jaw. The way his fingers keep curling and uncurling against his own stomach like he's testing that it's all still there.

"Hey." Rain scoots closer, chin finding Dew's shoulder. "You've been staring at that ceiling like it owes you money."

Dew snorts. "'M thinking."

"Dangerous." Rain grins, walks two fingers up Dew's sternum. "Wanna think out loud, or you want me to give you something better to do?"

Dew's quiet for a second.

His head tilts toward Rain's voice and his hand uncurls against his stomach, palm going loose and open. Not a word. He doesn't always have words for this. But Rain knows how to read a yes when it's offered with the whole body.

"Hi baby," Rain murmurs, feeling the exact moment Dew lets go of holding himself together.

He shifts up onto an elbow and lets his fingertips hover a breath above the center of Dew's chest. Waits. When Dew doesn't tense, doesn't flinch, he lets them land. Right in the middle of it. Over the new shape. Over the lines that are still pink and healing and entirely, finally his.

"Still with me?" Rain says.

Dew nods. Sharp first, then softer, and Rain feels his pulse pick up right under his palm.

He spreads his hand wider — collarbone, ribs, the slope of him that Dew used to only get to want and now just gets to have. Rain's breath does something embarrassing. He doesn't care.

"You're so fucking beautiful," he says. "Genuinely. It's a problem. I can't think straight."

Dew huffs a laugh, mouth tipping crooked, eyes sliding toward the wall. "You've never thought straight a day in your life."

"Okay, rude, and also true—"

"—not as pretty as you, though," Dew mutters.

Rain glows. Not figuratively — his light flares soft and pink at the edges, the way it always betrays him when he's pleased. He leans into it shamelessly.

"Oh, so I am pretty." He props his chin on Dew's chest, beaming. "Good. Glad we're agreed."

"That's not—" Dew starts, and Rain talks right over him.

"But you." He dips down, kisses the slope of muscle where soft meets solid. "You're handsome." Another kiss, lower, grinning against skin. "Stupidly handsome. Criminally. It's actually inconvenient for me."

Dew's laugh cracks out of him — surprised and real, the good ugly kind. "Inconvenient."

"Deeply. I can't get anything done." Rain props back up, eyes bright.

Dew's hand finds its way into Rain's curls, and the laugh goes quieter, but it doesn't leave his face. "Yeah?" he says. "You think I'm handsome?"

"Mhm." Rain's tail sways slow behind him. "Wanna show you."

Dew's fingers tighten in Rain's curls. "You sure?" His voice has gone rough. "I'm still kind of—" He glances down at his own chest, bare under Rain's hand, still new enough that he keeps catching himself looking. "Still getting used to it being mine."

Rain follows his gaze. Then looks back up, and whatever's on his face makes Dew's breath catch.

"Dew. I have wanted to get my hands on this chest since the day you told me you were getting it." He says it plainly, like a fact, like the weather. "I've been so chill about it. So patient and chill."

Dew laughs wet and startled. "You sent me eleven texts the morning of."

"Chill. And patient." Rain ducks down and kisses him — the curve of muscle, the place where the skin was shaped and healed, careful and unhurried but grinning the whole time. He lingers, breathes him in.

"Let me have you. Please," he says softly, the joke laying down somewhere gentle. "I've been dying to."

Dew exhales hard through his nose, and when he speaks his voice isn't steady at all. "You really mean it."

Not a question, quite. Like he needs to set it down somewhere outside himself and look at it.

Rain presses his lips to the center of Dew's chest, right over his heart, and holds there.

"Every word," he says. "C'mere, I'm gonna prove it."

And then he's moving — kissing down Dew's chest, mouth open and warm, taking his time but not making a ceremony of it. One kiss for the curve of muscle. One for the healed line where the shape was made. One for the nipple, careful, and Dew's hips give a little involuntary twitch that makes Rain hum, pleased.

He trails lower. Ribs, the soft give of Dew's stomach, the spot just above the waistband that makes Dew suck in a breath. Rain looks up, chin hooked over Dew's hip.

"Still good?"

"Yeah." Dew's voice is thick.

"Can I?" Fingers curled under the waistband.

Dew lifts his hips, and Rain peels the pants down and off and then just— stops. Looks. Sits back on his heels and takes in the whole flushed length of him, Dew's cock already swollen and stiff and glistening at the tip, and whatever face he's making must be ridiculous, because Dew snorts.

"You good down there?"

"Gimme a second. I'm having a moment." Rain wets his lips, and when he speaks again it comes out in a rush, like he can't believe his own luck: "Okay. Okay, I want—" He swallows. "I want you to fuck my tits."

Dew blinks like he's gone a little mad. "You want me to what?"

"Fuck my tits." Rain's tail loops cheerfully around his ankle.

"I— baby, I can't exactly—" Dew gestures vaguely toward the closet, ears gone hot. "D'you want me to get the—"

"You can," Rain says, delighted. "Can I taste first? Get you ready?"

Dew's tongue darts across his lower lip. "...Yeah. Yeah, 'course you can."

"Lie back." Rain's already nudging his thighs apart, settling between them like he's got a reservation. "Let me get you there."

Dew goes loose and easy, and Rain takes his sweet time — mouths the inside of one thigh, then the other, sucks a mark into soft skin just to feel Dew jolt, hands stroking up over his hips. Then he licks one long, flat stripe up through him, slow, and Dew's whole body goes taut.

"Fuck—"

"Mhm." Rain hums it against him, already slick to the chin, and seals his mouth over Dew's cock, hard and swollen, flushed dark and standing proud out of its hood. He sucks soft and steady, tongue working him in slow circles, and Dew's hips kick up off the bed. He's drenched already, wet smearing across Rain's lips and chin.

Rain moans at the taste of him, the slick of him, like it's the best thing he's had all week. He pulls back just to look, Dew's cock shining and swollen, his whole sex flushed and soaked and gorgeous. The sound Rain makes is pure greed.

"Fuck, look at you. So hard for me already." He grins, breath hot against the wet. "Showoff."

Dew chokes on a laugh that breaks into a groan as Rain dives back in — "Rain—" — closing his lips around him and sucking harder now, tongue flat and dragging, hips rolling up to grind himself against Rain's mouth.

Rain feasts. There's no other word for it. He works him with his whole mouth — lips, tongue, the gentle graze that makes Dew sob. Laps up the slick that keeps coming, buries his face in him and moans like he could do this for hours, like there's nothing about this body he wouldn't worship. Stars go off behind his eyes. Drool and slick run down his chin and he could not care less.

Dew's hand slides to his horn and grips, and when Rain glances up through his lashes to meet that blown-black gaze, Dew's voice comes out absolutely wrecked.

"You wanna— c'mon, baby, want you to ride my face. Come up here."

Rain pulls off with an obscene, glistening gasp, mouth shining, chin soaked. "Oh, I want." He licks his lips. "But not yet. Not done with you."

He goes back down, greedy and sloppy and making zero attempt to be graceful — tongue flat against Dew's cock, lips sealed, sucking him through every grind, Dew rocking up into the wet heat of his mouth and Rain taking all of it, slick running down his throat, the sounds of it loud and filthy and obscene.

He's having the actual time of his life.

"Fuck, baby—" Dew's hand tightens on his horn, hips snapping up against his mouth. "That's— you like that?"

Rain moans his answer against him, enthusiastic and uncoordinated, eyes watering and crinkled at the corners like he's almost laughing with how good this is — like there's nowhere on earth he'd rather be than face-deep in his boyfriend, drenched to the chin, consuming him whole.

Dew's hand slides from his horn down into his curls, fists there, gets a real grip. His voice shifts, more sure. The voice of a man who knows exactly what he's doing to the person beneath him.

"Yeah? You like when I fuck your face, baby?"

Rain whimpers around him, eyes rolling back, and Dew laughs — a real laugh, dark and pleased and so fucking masculine Rain's whole body lights up with it.

"Look at you. So pretty like this. So good for me." Dew rolls his hips again, slower now, watching, his free hand coming down to cup Rain's jaw, thumb dragging through the wet at the corner of his mouth. "Yeah, sweetheart. Take it."

And Rain does, moaning brokenly, hands flying up to grip Dew's thighs, drinking it all in: Dew's voice, Dew's grip, Dew above him taking what he wants, Dew being exactly who he is. The slick running down Rain's throat, the burn in his jaw, the firm hold in his hair guiding him onto his boyfriend's cock at exactly the pace his boyfriend wants.

Rain could come from this alone.

He's a little worried he might.

Dew watches him drool around his cock and groans, hips rocking, thumb still working the corner of Rain's mouth like he can't quite believe he's allowed.

"That's it. That's my good boy. Look so fucking pretty taking it for me."

Rain whines, high and ruined, the praise hitting him somewhere unfair. He sucks harder, sloppier, makes a show of it — eyes wet, throat working, tongue flat and devoted. Dew swears and his rhythm goes ragged, hand fisting tighter in Rain's curls.

He works him like that — Dew rolling down into his mouth at his own pace, Rain greedy and pliant and shining wet beneath him, both of them so far gone they've stopped keeping track of who's giving and who's taking until Dew's leaking steadily, shaking, thighs trembling around Rain's head, right on the edge.

Rain pulls off with a gasp and a long string of slick he doesn't bother wiping, lips swollen, face soaked, grinning like a menace.

"Okay— okay, c'mere, up here." Rain's already tugging at Dew's hips, breathless, urging him up the bed. "Wanted you between these since the second you walked in, c'mon, gimme—"

Dew huffs a dazed laugh and lets himself be hauled, clumsy and pliant, until he's crawling up to straddle Rain's chest, knees bracketing his ribs, and oh. Oh, the view. Rain's hands go still on his thighs and just hold.

Dew's settled right over him now, his cunt pressed warm and soaked against the center of Rain's chest, slick already smearing where they meet. His cock stands flushed and shining and proud, poking out from where he's tucked against Rain's skin. Rain could weep. He looks up the long line of Dew's body — flat chest heaving, healed and his, that gorgeous cock right there for the taking — and makes a sound like he's been gut-punched.

"Fuck, you're—" Dew starts, breath catching, hands not sure where to land.

"Yeah." Rain doesn't even let him finish. He oils his palms, his chest, the soft weight of his tits, works it in until he's gleaming, then presses them together. He makes a warm snug channel and looks up with absolute filth in his eyes. "Made you a spot. C'mon, baby. Use it."

The first slide takes some negotiating — Dew shifts forward, Rain adjusts his grip, a slippery false start that makes them both snort, "okay, wait—" "no, lower, here—" — and then Rain reaches between them, thumbs Dew's cock free of its hood, and tucks him down into the slick warm press of his cleavage himself.

They both go quiet with it.

Because it's slow. Rain wants it slow. He holds his tits snug and Dew settles into the channel, hard and swollen and so wet already that the first grind pulls a slick, filthy sound out of the space between them. He's small like this, flushed dark, glistening, his cock nestled in oil and the slick that's been running from him since Rain's mouth was on him. The head drags up through the tight warmth and catches, just barely, before Dew rocks back down. Rain watches the whole thing. So does Dew.

"Oh." Dew's hips stutter. "Oh, that's—"

"Mhm." Rain's gone smug and breathless at once, voice thick. "Look how good you fit. Made for you, baby."

Dew looks. He can't not. He grinds forward again, slow, and watches the swollen head of his cock ride up through the slick press of Rain's cleavage, shining and flushed and right there between his tits, before he rocks back down and it disappears into the warm clutch again. Watches the wet smear he's leaving on Rain's skin. His eyes go wide and glassy. "Holy shit."

"Yeah?" Rain squeezes them tighter, and the next drag of pressure against him pulls a broken, soaked sound right out of Dew. "Feel that? That's all for you. Get me messy, c'mon."

"Fuck, baby—" Dew's voice cracks, eyes still glued to where his cock keeps disappearing into the tight channel of Rain's chest. "You can't just say things like that."

"Like what?" Rain's grinning, helpless and radiant, and it shakes his whole chest. The shift of it against Dew's cock makes Dew gasp and swear and grab Rain's shoulders to hold him still. "Okay— okay do not do that again or I'm gonna—"

"Do what, this?" Rain laughs again, pure menace, deliberately rolling his chest, and Dew groans and drops his forehead toward Rain's like he's been wounded.

It stops being funny when something settles in Dew's spine as he builds a more confident rhythm — that same shift Rain felt when Dew's hand fisted in his hair, the quiet click of him stepping into himself. When he lifts his head his eyes have gone dark and certain.

"Hold them tight for me," he says, low. "Just like that. Don't let go."

Rain's whole body sparks. "Yes, sir."

Dew's grin flickers, dangerous and pleased, and then he braces his hands flat on the bed on either side of Rain's head. He boxes him in, leans down over him and starts to fuck the channel of Rain's tits in earnest. Slow, still, but deeper now, surer, every grind a long deliberate drag of his cock through oil and slick and the warm snug clutch Rain is holding for him. The sounds it makes are filthy. Wet, rhythmic, the obscene squelch of how soaked he is, his cunt smearing wet across Rain's sternum every time he rocks down.

And he's watching Rain the whole time.

"Look at you," Dew says, voice rough and low, the voice from before — the one that knows what it's doing. "Holding me so good. So pretty under me, baby."

Rain whimpers and his grip on his tits goes tighter, squeezing the channel snug around him. Dew groans deep in his chest and rolls his hips harder.

"Yeah. There you go. That's mine, sweetheart, isn't it? You made it for me." A pause, a slow filthy drag, the head of his cock pushing up into Rain's cleavage slick and shining and catching before he sinks it back down. "Gonna make a mess of you. Gonna ruin you right here."

"Please—" Rain's voice cracks, glow flaring wild, his chest shining and streaked and dripping. "Please, baby, do it, want it so bad—"

"I know you do."

Dew's rhythm picks up, hips snapping down now, grinding through the slick clutch with real intent. The obscene wet sounds of it fill the room — the slap of his cunt against Rain's chest, the squelch of oil and slick smeared everywhere between them, his cock dragging fast and frantic up through the warm tight space Rain is squeezing for him.

Rain is soaked. His sternum, his ribs, his tits where Dew keeps grinding through — all of it slick and shining with Dew's wet, glowing gold in the candlelight, and Dew is watching it like a man possessed.

"Look at the mess you're making of me," he pants. "Fuck, sweetheart, look at you, taking it so good—"

"Love you—" Rain gasps, undone. "Love you, love it, please—"

"I know, baby. I've got you." Dew leans down further, forehead almost touching Rain's, hips grinding ragged and desperate now, his own breath breaking apart. "Gonna give you everything. Gonna soak you. You ready?"

"Yes— yes, give it to me—"

Dew breaks.

His hips stutter, his whole body pulls tight, and he comes with a sound that's got Rain's name drowning in it. Not a stripe but a flood, slick gushing hot between them, soaking Rain's chest, running down the channel they made and over his ribs and pooling in the dip of his collarbone, more than either of them expected, more than Dew thought his body could give. He keeps grinding through it, shaking, working himself against the slick channel of Rain's tits until he's wrung empty, until he's drenched Rain everywhere they touch.

For a second after, Dew just— stops. Stares down at the mess of Rain beneath him. Something moves across his face that isn't quite a word, like his body did something he didn't know it could do. Like he's a little awed by himself.

Rain's glow flares radiant and wild, catching the wet shine of all of it, and he's laughing and gasping at once, wrecked and thrilled and dragging his fingers through the mess like he wants to be drenched in it.

"There it is," Rain says, breathless, grinning up at him. "Look at you. Look what you did."

Dew exhales something that's half laugh, half sob, and collapses forward before his arms give out.

Rain catches him, of course he catches him, gathering him in, one hand splaying warm and slick across his back, both of them dripping and laughing into each other's skin.

"Did I really just—" Dew starts, muffled.

"You really just."

Dew makes a broken, exalted little sound and Rain feels it go through his whole chest. He slides a hand into Dew's hair, scratches gentle at the roots.

"You okay?" Rain says, softer now.

"Mm." There's a pause before Dew speaks again. Quiet, almost shy. "I feel really good. Like— really good."

Rain turns his head and kisses his temple, and doesn't make it a big thing, because making it a big thing would ruin it.

"Good," he says simply. "Me too."

They stay like that until the mess between them starts to cool and Rain shifts with a grimace. "Okay. Up. I need a bath, Lucifer's tits."

Dew lifts his head and surveys the damage — Rain's chest streaked and shining and frankly a disaster, slick pooled in the dip of his collarbone, his stomach still wet where it ran down. He grins, slow and unbearably pleased with himself.

"Look at you."

"Yeah, yeah, take a picture." Rain bats at his shoulder. "Move, fire-ghoul, I'm freezing and disgusting."

Dew snorts and rolls off him. They shuffle to the bath together, Rain leading, Dew trailing with a hand at the small of his back. Rain dips a toe in the water still standing from earlier and makes a deeply put-upon noise.

"It's cold."

"Mm."

"Babe."

"Yeah, I heard you." Dew's still grinning. He steps in behind him, sinks down into the cold water without flinching, and Rain watches with no small amount of satisfaction as steam starts curling off the surface within seconds, Dew's hand trailing through it, heat blooming out from his palm in slow rolling waves until the whole tub goes from cold to warm to perfect.

"My hero," Rain sighs, climbing in after him.

"Get in here, drama queen."

Rain settles back between Dew's thighs with a sound that's almost embarrassing, the warm water lapping up around his shoulders, Dew's chest solid and steady at his back. Dew curls his arms around him, hands sliding up to splay across Rain's chest and Rain lets his head fall back onto Dew's shoulder.

"You did so good," Dew murmurs into his hair. The same words Rain's been giving him all night, handed back.

Rain makes a small, pleased noise. "You're getting better at the praise thing."

"Had a good teacher."

"Mm. Suck-up."

Dew laughs against his temple, and then he gets to work. Pours warm water over Rain's chest, palms running gentle through the mess, washing him clean. He takes his time. Scrubs the slick from Rain's sternum, the dip of his collarbone, the soft underside of his tits. His hands are careful but in that I love this body and I'm not done touching it way.

"Hold still."

"I am holding still."

"You're squirming."

"You're tickling me, you menace."

Dew kisses the back of his neck, doesn't apologize, and keeps going. Once he's rinsed clean, Dew reaches for the comb on the side of the tub and starts working it through Rain's hair. Wide-toothed, patient, his other hand cupping Rain's jaw to tilt his head just so. He's not as practiced at it as Rain is, fumbles once or twice, but he's careful and he's trying and Rain melts against him completely.

"Gotta show everyone how pretty you are tomorrow," Dew murmurs, threading his fingers through to check for tangles.

Rain's glow goes soft and warm, lazy gold under the water. "Yeah?"

"Mhm."

"Already showed you."

Dew huffs a laugh against his temple and kisses him there, slow.

The house lights are up. The music's off. Tempt at this hour belongs to the staff in a way it doesn't at any other — softer than daylight, quieter than service, the velvet still warm from the night. Every seam visible. The poles catching the overheads. The kind of hour where the club stops performing and just sits there with you, spent and a little loose-lipped.

Mountain is sweeping methodically with his whole body, like the broom is a tool he respects and the floor is something he'd like to do a good job by.

"So," Phantom says, around the cherry stem.

Swiss doesn't look up. Flips another chair. "No."

"You don't even know what I was going to say."

"You were going to ask a question."

"No, I was going to ask a question."

"Same thing."

Phantom plucks the stem out of their mouth — tied, naturally, they're not going to waste a perfectly good party trick — and flicks it into the trash bin behind the bar. "What's the wildest thing you've seen here? As a security professional. For posterity."

Swiss flips another chair. "No."

Phantom sets their sights on Mountain instead.

"Mountain. Your turn."

Mountain looks up from his sweeping. He has a smudge of glitter on his cheek that nobody has told him about. Phantom is going to let him keep it.

"Hm?"

"What's the wildest thing you've seen while working here?"

Mountain considers. He leans on his broom in a way that suggests he is taking this question with the gravity it deserves.

"Swiss," he says after a moment.

Phantom blinks. "Swiss what."

"Swiss is the wildest thing I've seen here."

Across the room, Swiss goes very still over a chair he was halfway to lifting.

Mountain, oblivious, goes back to sweeping. There is now, somehow, an even softer expression on his face than there was thirty seconds ago. The ghoul looks like he's remembering a sunrise.

Phantom sets down the rag.

This is, they decide, the most important moment of their professional life.

"Mountain," they say, deeply calm, the way one approaches a feral cat one wants to befriend.

"Explain."

𖥸

Here is what Phantom learns, over the next fifteen minutes of cleanup, which they will stretch into thirty because Mountain is talking now and Swiss has accepted his fate with the resignation of a ghoul who has been outed by his husband in front of Lucifer and the bar runner turned baby dancer:

Swiss used to be on the other side of the pole.

"Three years," Mountain says, like he's reciting a sacred number. "Three and a half if you count the last few months when he was mostly training the new hires."

"He was a dancer," Phantom says, dumbfounded.

"Headliner," Swiss says, dryly from across the room.

Phantom, who has not dropped a glass in all their years of service topside, picks up a clean rocks glass and almost — almost — fumbles it onto the bar. They recover. Barely.

"Swiss."

"I know."

"Swiss —"

"Phantom, I am asking you, as a colleague—"

"You were a headliner."

Swiss flips a chair with what can only be described as repressive force. "It was a different life."

"You're predominantly earth."

"Yes."

"You did strip routines."

"Yes."

"As an earth ghoul."

"Phantom." Swiss finally looks at them. He has the calm, faintly haunted expression of a ghoul who knew this day would come and made his peace with it long ago. "I have a little fire. A little quint. I made it work."

"He did fire routines," Mountain says, dreamily, to the broom.

Phantom turns to him so fast their tail nearly clips the bar.

"He did what?"

The fire routine, as Mountain tells it, was less a routine and more an event. Swiss had a signature — Mountain calls it that, signature, with the reverence other people reserve for vintage wine — that involved a length of black silk, a controlled flame, and what Mountain describes, with his hands, as "the part where he goes—" and then stops, because the gesture he's making cannot be reproduced in mixed company, or any company at all, for that matter.

Phantom is staring.

Swiss is stacking chairs at a rate that suggests he would like to leave this dimension.

"Earth predominant," Mountain continues, sweeping a careful arc around a sticky patch near the rail seating. "So the grounding was insane. He could hold a pose for like — minutes. And then the fire'd come up through the silk and the quint'd carry the static so the whole room felt it—"

"Mountain," Swiss grumbles.

"What? They asked."

"They asked about security."

"This is about security," Mountain says, with the unshakable confidence of a ghoul making a point he's going to win. "I'm explaining why you're good at your job. You know the room from both sides."

Swiss puts a chair down very gently and pinches the bridge of his nose.

"You're not wrong," he admits, to the floor.

Phantom feels themself ascending.

𖥸

There is, eventually, a story.

Mountain tells it while Swiss visibly resigns himself to it. He's stopped lifting chairs. He's just leaning on a stack of them now, arms folded, watching his husband from across the room with an expression Phantom is logging for later use against him.

It was Swiss's last night.

"Not planned to be," Mountain says. "He wasn't quitting. He just — that's when it happened."

A bachelor party. Loud, drunk, the kind that thinks the velvet rope is a suggestion. One of them — the groom, naturally, because the groom is always the worst — decided halfway through Swiss's set that he was going to climb up.

"Onto the stage?" Phantom asks.

"Onto Swiss," Mountain says.

Phantom puts the rag down again.

The bouncer at the time, Mountain can't remember his name, was three steps too slow. The groom got a hand on Swiss's ankle. Swiss was mid-routine. The silk was draped along his jaw, smoldering soft against his cheek, the kind of slow drag he was famous for.

"And?" Phantom prompts.

Swiss says, without looking up: "I slapped him."

"With?"

"My hand."

Phantom blinks.

"Swiss."

"He was on my ankle, Phantom."

"Swiss."

"Phantom, what was I supposed to do."

"He was fondling himself with fire," Mountain says with the awe of a ghoul witnessing miracles. "He had the silk against his jaw and the flame was doing the thing and then this guy grabs his ankle and Swiss just —"

Mountain makes a gesture with his broom that approximates a backhand of devastating elegance.

"— didn't even break tempo."

"It was a clean hit," Swiss shrugs.

"It was perfect," Mountain sighs fondly, like he's remembering a dream.

"Mountain." Phantom can't help the giggle that bubbles out of their chest.

"He didn't even drop the silk."

"I didn't drop the silk," Swiss confirms, faintly proud despite himself.

"Aether came out from the back," Mountain says, "and he watched the whole rest of the set before he called for medical. Just watched. And after, when Swiss was off-shift, Aether walked up to him with a coffee and offered him a job on the door."

"On the spot?"

"On the spot."

"Aether said—" Swiss starts.

"Aether said," Mountain interrupts, because he is going to deliver the punchline himself if it kills him, "'I think you'd like the view from this side.'"

Phantom exhales a long slow breath into the cool club air. "Iconic."

"He took two weeks to think about it," Mountain says.

"I took two weeks to negotiate," Swiss corrects.

"Same thing."

"Different thing."

They look at each other across the room. Mountain is openly smiling now, soft and crooked. Swiss is doing the thing he does where his mouth doesn't move but his eyes do, the small private dimming that on him counts as unbearably soft.

Phantom looks away. Some things aren't for them.

𖥸

The cleanup is mostly done.

Phantom is restocking the well, mostly so they have a reason to stay close enough to keep prompting. Swiss has gone back to chairs, but the resignation has lifted. He is, Phantom notes with quiet delight, in the post-confession glow of a ghoul who didn't want to talk and now sort of does.

"Okay," Phantom says. "Security stories. Real ones. Hit me."

Swiss flips a chair. Considers.

"Couple proposed from the rail seats once."

"To each other?"

"To Cirrus."

Phantom pauses with their hand in the ice bin.

"Like — together?"

"Together. Got down on one knee in tandem. Brought a ring."

"And?"

"She said no."

"Gently?"

"Cirrus said no the way Cirrus says anything. They went home crying but they tipped on the way out."

Mountain hums in agreement from across the room.

"What else?"

Swiss thinks. The pause is long enough that Phantom suspects he is editing — picking the one he'll actually tell, out of a much larger archive he never will.

"Two guys got into a fight at the bar," he says, eventually. "Long while ago."

"Over?"

"Whether Cumulus's bourbon list was alphabetized by distillery or by region."

Phantom stares.

"It was alphabetized by distillery," Swiss adds, like this is an important footnote.

"They fought?"

"Full on threw hands."

"Over—"

"Over the bourbon list. One of them had a printout. He brought a printout to the bar to prove a point. Apparently they had argued over it before."

Phantom is laughing now. They're trying not to, but they're failing.

"What happened?"

Swiss flips the last chair onto the table. Sets it down. Leans on his forearm against the seat back and lets himself, finally, smile — small and crooked and entirely for Mountain.

"Mountain picked them both up."

"Both at once?"

"One in each hand."

"By the collar?"

"By the jacket."

Across the room, Mountain leans on his broom and looks at the floor with the modest pleasure of a ghoul whose husband is bragging about him.

"Held them like that," Swiss continues, "for about — what, six seconds?"

"Ten," Mountain says.

"Ten seconds. Just held them. Off the floor. Made them apologize to Cumulus and to each other and finish their drinks at separate ends of the bar."

"And then?"

"They tipped Cumulus a hundred each and left in the same cab."

Phantom looks between them.

Mountain is still studying the floor with that small modest smile. Swiss is still leaning on the chair he just stacked, watching his husband across an empty club at nearly three in the morning, glitter on Mountain's cheek that still nobody has told him about and a sweep mark on the floor in a careful arc around the rail.

Phantom has spent years in this club. They know what a love story looks like in this room. They have catalogued every variation.

This one, they decide, is their favorite.

"Hot," they say, decisively.

Swiss turns red from the collar up.

"Phantom."

"What. I'm just saying. The man picks people up like grocery bags. Acknowledge it."

"Acknowledged," Mountain says happily, to the floor.

Swiss puts his face in his hands.

Phantom finishes the well, hangs up the rag, and leaves them to lock up — pausing at the door to glance back one more time at the two of them across the empty club, the lights still up, the chairs all stacked, the music off.

Mountain says something Phantom can't quite hear.

Swiss laughs.

It's a quiet sound. Phantom has heard it maybe three times over.

They let the door swing shut behind them and head home through the cool dark, tail flicking, already composing the text to Rain.

Babe.

You'll never guess who used to be a stripper.

“We haven’t been out in too long,” he says to no one in particular. “Should be good for all of us to get some sun and time to ourselves.”

“Oh, shut it,” Aurora teases, leaning forward against her seatbelt to hook her chin over his shoulder rest. “You’re just excited to see Dewey all dressed up again.”

Cirrus snorts, and Swiss’s eyes flash in the rearview mirror. “And what about it?” He asks. “You cannot tell me, Rory, that you don’t like seeing Dew all dolled up as Cee’s wife.”

She pouts, leaning back before cursing up a storm as the seatbelt locks. “Fucking- Swiss-” she sputters, unclicking it and rebuckling herself in more comfortably. “That’s not what I’m saying. You’re telling me you’re more excited to work on your car than to have numerous raunchy ‘affairs’ and play the game?”

“Eh, equally excited,” Swiss shrugs, settling back into the driver’s seat. “And it’s less for my sake. Like seeing all of you relaxed. Having fun. Cee too. Lucifer knows you all deserve it.”

Cirrus squeezes his hand, her other arm resting on the open window. “We all do,” she agrees, watching the trees fly by on the side of the road in a blur. “It’s always a good time when we come out here. Copia picked a nice place.”

“He really did. The showers in that house? Ugh, I could kiss him for the showers alone,” Aurora groans.

“You’ll get your chance,” Cirrus laughs. “Though you really don’t need that excuse to kiss him. He’s awfully fond of you, would let you get away with anything.”

Aurora snorts, running a hand through her hair. “You’re one to talk, Cir, he gave you a Prince-damned keytar because you fluttered your eyes at him once like seven years ago!”

“Maybe so,” she trills, birdlike. “My pride and joy.” Cirrus just preens, and Swiss laughs, melodic like bells.

“Oh, an’ you’re one to laugh!” Aurora turns to Swiss, meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror for an instant before he goes back to watching the road. “Copia’s first summon, he spoils you absolutely rotten. Who got the paperwork in order for this car because you don't legally exist in the human world, Swiss?”

“What? Can’t a guy enjoy a little gluttony every once in a while?” he says, still laughing. “And really, Rory? He spoils all of us. We’re literally driving to his vacation house, with his credit card, and getting things ready so all eleven of us can have a vacation where we all hang out for two or three weeks and pretend to have affairs with each other. If that’s not him spoiling us, I don’t know what is.”

There’s a silence only filled by the song on the radio fading out and a new, brighter pop song taking its place.

“Very fair, Swiss,” Rory hums, lifting her chin. “Very fair.”

“See, Cir? She can see reason,” Swiss teases.

“Hey!”